Unsung Heroes
by Sealurk
Summary: There are those in the SGC who are spoken of in awe even by SG teams - and yet they receive no medals, no commendations. Rated M for descriptive gore. You have been warned!


**Unsung Heroes**

They'd faced them all over the years. Goa'uld, Jaffa, murderous alien predators and catastrophic near-extinction scenarios. But then, they were the elite. They were the team called in when ordinary SGC personnel couldn't handle the task. They even got to use custom gear designed to their own specifications, and yet they were virtually unknown outside of the base. The few people on Earth who knew of the Stargate Program, who were even part of it had rarely heard of them. President Hayes didn't know they existed, and their names didn't appear on any military forms.

Colonel Reynolds was tightly clutching a smoking G36, leaning against the curved concrete wall. He was surrounded by worried looking SFs with P90s and M4s. The security squad temporarily under Reynolds' command had taken refuge at an intersection in the SGC's labyrinthine tunnels. By order of General Landry, the entire section had been cleared and sealed off, with only the security squad remaining. Around the corner, lights flickered. Acrid fumes that stung the eyes and the sound of something viscous dropping onto the concrete floor accompanied a pungent smell worse than rotting meat – and it looked like at least one of the SFs had already been sick as a result of the vile sensory overload.

"Oh God, am I glad to see you guys. Landry was about to send us in there."

It was clear that the SG-3 leader wasn't joking – the expression of relief on his sweat-soaked face, and the wide, shocked eyes of his subordinates was far too sincere to be sarcasm, and the SGC had quickly developed a healthy respect for Boyd, Jankowski and Brinkmann. Thin streams of blood trickled down Reynolds' face and arms, but the wounds didn't look severe.

"What are we facing, Colonel?" Boyd said in an even and impeccably professional tone, glancing at the shell casings strewn across the floor – there were hundreds, maybe even a thousand. Reynolds had done his best, but now it was up to Boyd's team. The Colonel took a deep breath to compose himself before starting, almost gagging at the stench.

"Foothold situation. We contained it, but we need you to finish the job. We've never seen these guys before, they're like insects, with hardened exoskeletons. Carter's best guess is they're from a world with incredibly high atmospheric pressure – pierce the shell and you've got a massive explosive decompression of the entire animal. Be careful – besides smelling really bad, their blood seems to give off fumes almost like tear gas."

Boyd nodded sagely. His time at the SGC coupled with his training and more than a decade of experience meant little fazed him any more.

"Don't worry Colonel – we're prepared. Get yourself to the infirmary."

Nodding thanks, Reynolds gratefully and hurriedly ushered his team away from the sealed section. The man entrusted to lead SG-3 was a veteran of the SGC, one of the most experienced offworld commanders it had, and he had proven himself time and again to be both willing and capable to do almost anything required of him. Yet even he knew when to leave a job to the professionals.

The team prepared silently, indifferent to the irritating, foul-smelling fumes wafting around the corner as they donned their protective gear. They had faced worse, but they hadn't come this far by taking risks.

In full hazmat, Boyd walked confidently around the corner – the first task was to assess the situation. There were nuances even a man like Reynolds would miss; it was best to see for himself. Jankowski followed while Brinkmann double-checked their equipment to prepare for the inevitable struggle.

"My God." Jankowski breathed. Boyd had to admit, the scene ahead of him came close to matching the worst he'd dealt with.

A strip light had been torn from the ceiling, swinging by a wire and flickering intermittently. Jagged-edged plates and shards of inch-thick black exoskeleton littered the floor, some of them buried deeply in the concrete. Torn, pulverised green and brown flesh had been thrown everywhere with explosive force, spattered against the wall and wrapped around the pipes in the ceiling like spaghetti flung by a hyperactive two year old and left to rot. Body parts vaguely recognisable as alien limbs and hideous looking arthropod faces had been hurled in every direction.

But the worst aspect was the slime. Thick purple-grey gunge coated every surface – the floor was covered by a lake of the substance almost two inches deep, and more coated the pipes, the exoskeletal remnants and the ceiling, where it slowly formed long ropes that periodically dropped to the floor with a sickeningly organic sound.

"Brinkmann, you can put the body bags away. I want heavy duty bleach, two shovels and the biohazard sacks, and have the pressure washer on standby with the strongest detergent we've got. This is going to be an all-nighter."


End file.
